THE CORNER BETWEEN MY LIFE AND HERS
A NOVEL
TINA GALLOWAY
Copyright © 2011 Tina Galloway; Butchy and Bean Media
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2012-01-06
Dedication
It is never too late to be who you might have been—George Eliot
Acknowledgements
Thanks to everyone who has been an integral part of making this book come to fruition.
Mom & Dad-my deepest love and thanks for giving me the tools & support needed to accomplish anything I put my mind to.
Thanks to my loving husband for his continual encouragement and support.
Thanks to my sister Nicole for her knowledge, insight and help…it was definitely needed.
Thanks April. Thanks Grandmom.
Thanks all the other members of my immediate and extended family!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
www.twistedelf.com
www.tinagalloway.com
PROLOGUE
She found me lying in a pool of vomit and blood on the queen bed of the significantly aged dusty, mildewed cabin. The place she intended to meet me for a weekend of fervent passionate lovemaking, accompanied by wine, music, candles and everything else that made for incredible sex. I had left the heavy wooden door slightly ajar knowing her curiosity would lead her inside. She would not be accustomed to the house; it wasn’t my typical recommendation I usually took her to more expensive accommodations. It was overtly modest.
She had come in, calling my name, loudly at first, elated to see me, then more softly as she started making her way to the back of the cabin toward the bedrooms. For a moment, she probably thought I may have ventured into the gentrified town or went for a walk, but there was an airy almost vacant feeling in the air. An overwhelming sorrow had enveloped the small house. Sadness for what, she didn’t really know.
She had come as quickly as she could, leaving her soon-to-be ex-husband sitting alone in the Corner Shop Café on the corner of Bleeker and Bond Street. They had met earlier to discuss the impending divorce. He had given her the divorce papers to sign; they were still folded neatly inside her Louis Vuitton shoulder bag.
The drive up to the cabin from New York had been an almost impossible trip between the knowledge of her failed marriage and the eventuality of the affair. She had considered turning around, going back many times, but ultimately decided to keep moving forward. Her ex had promised to make everything as easy as possible (with the divorce) if she just signed the papers and went back to Germany. He had promised to pay the $4000 a month that she wanted and needed. She had no other alternatives—the thought of staying in New York was out of the question. I could never support her habits; this she knew from the moment she met me.
She had never thought of me as so affected, fragile. She remembered her thoughts when she first met me: young, talented, beautiful. All six foot three inches of me, chestnut brown eyes with skin to match, standing above her with a runner’s body and a well-developed vocabulary. I was nothing like Howie, who flaunted his money and fame to mask his increasing belly size and decreasing penis size. She had seen me completely different, possibly even describing me as impervious. This suicide had been furthest from her mind. What a bad judge of character she had turned out to be.
She screamed a high-pitched scream when she first saw my head bleeding from possibly losing consciousness and hitting the nightstand. She wondered if I had known I was about to die, known that I had taken too many pills and what the outcome would be? Or was I just too drugged up to know what I was doing? Did I think this would somehow dull my pain, but ultimately she would find me and I would live?
This was all too much for her. She began crying. Her cries where more like wailing and she felt a terrible ache and trembling throughout her whole body. She had passively loved me but didn’t know what to do. Her marriage was ending, she had debts she couldn’t pay, and she knew she didn’t really want to stay in the United States anymore.
She noticed the crumpled business card on the bed next to where I lay, Dr. Seymour Stewart. She was vaguely familiar with him. A “friend” (a previous companion of sorts), used to see the Dr. and suggested that she visited him when she first learned of Howie’s indiscretions. Had I been a patient? If so, obviously it hadn’t worked. There I was, blank gritty eyes attached to a limp body ravished by too many sleeping pills and cheap liquor. I was once a lover now a dead man with an open laptop computer sitting next to him. The laptop contained the last traces of my thoughts—emails that I had sent to everyone who meant anything to me, telling them why I had done this heinous thing, leaving behind a wife and young son. It seemed so bizarre and laborious.
She had always doubted the validity of “shrinks,” vividly remembering her mother (when she was a child growing up in Germany) diagnosed weekly with the same condition, an arsenal of prescriptions in the medicine cabinets. The prescriptions controlled the visions and dreams at times. Other times, her mother would wake up the family in the middle of the night, crying out for god knows what and god knows who. She was always afraid of those “shrinks.” They usually meant only one thing—the inability to comprehend authenticity from fabrications.
People in New York, though, considered shrinks as carefree as a trip to the dentist or the eye doctor. She knew Howie’s associates would visit them for every mental ailment imaginable, wasting their valuable time from the people who obviously needed their services more pressingly (me). If she had known, she would have said something (stressed the urgency), but how could she have known? I was so…reserved.
The soon-to-be ex-husband had purchased a one-way plane ticket for her to return to Germany. She didn’t know if she would ever come back to the United States, but she had held onto a hope that maybe she would get herself together—stop using cocaine on the weekends and drinking too many glasses of vodka and water. Maybe she could become the person that she wanted to be: a painter and a mother. That had been her intention when she first came to New York before she had ever met Howie or me. Now she had this affair that had turned into a nightmare. A dead man lying on the bed covered in his own vile vomit.
She dialed 911 and just slumped to the floor, describing to the operator what she had discovered between sobs and moans. She was curled up on the floor—a ball of a person—sounds coming from her body loud and angry. She described the smells: the awful stench of demise and dejection. She described the sounds: the stillness and unsettling peace. This felt like an out-of-body experience, something that had become all too familiar in the last few months since Howie had found out about the affair. This was only to be a way to reclaim her independence, to even the playing field between her and Howie. Somehow, it was now forcing her to become more dependent and
